XI Blu Ray special features

The overall extras package on the X Blu-Ray was quite excellent, and more than made up for the unfortunate lack of commentaries. In particular the exhaustive making of documentary was pretty special and very interesting.

Are there any details on the extras package for the XI Blu-Ray yet? I'm hoping for another exhaustive doc personally.

Okay, I know this isn't really the place for it, but rounding up my re-watch I'll go into the special features on the RDXI blu-ray (which I assume are the same as on the DVD).

First off, the Behind the scenes, which is basically most of what anyone's interested in. I usually find these absolutely fascinating, none more so than the one for RDX which basically chronicled EVERYTHING that happened. A lot of the pre-production, initial writing and ideas, thoughts by the cast and crew, constructing the sets (I love the set bits), costumes, models... I could watch that stuff endlessly, and RDX had it in spades. Two hours long, I think it was. TWO SMEGGING HOURS. By contrast, RDXI is a more compact affair - probably because the production process was a lot smoother. But still, we got some good behind the scenes footage and insights from all involved, probably just the right amount. Though again, I do feel a bit cheated compared to the epic that was RDX's iteration. It was still pretty funny hearing the odd little stories, like how Craig, Danny and Rob (I think it was) stopped off at a service station Starbucks, still in costume I assume, whilst on the way to a location shoot and a customer asking "are you real?", as well as Snacky falling over and Danny apparently only realising then that someone was inside. Not really much to say, though I did keep an eye out for me in the audience, just in case they'd snuck in some audience footage from series 12. And one thing I must mention about the audience is just how quiet they kept things - when talking to other audience members I heard people mention that they'd also seen "the Rimmer episode", but that was all that they'd give away.

Deleted Scenes next, and I can see why some of them were deleted - some of them were stretching things a bit too far, or had things in which didn't fit into the episode (such as the Samsara being a prison transport ship). Others had minor re-workings which were re-tooled or shortened in the full episode (such as the Personality Tuck machine introduction in Officer Rimmer being slightly re-done, or Cat stealing Lister's hospital food in Give & Take being too long in the deleted version), but there were a few in there which could have stayed and were axed, I assume, simply because of time constraints. I honestly can't remember what they were off the top of my head but there were some from Give & Take and Officer Rimmer which I felt could have stayed. The segment isn't long and well worth a watch for a little bit of extra Dwarf.

Smeg Ups feels a little bit wasted when some of the best smeg ups (Kryten nearly tripping, and Snacky falling over) are already in the Behind the scenes. But, nevertheless, here's the cast messing up. It's always funny how much Robert Llwellyn manages to keep in character, and I'll be pretty annoyed if the best smeg up from when I saw an episode recorded doesn't make it to the series XII collection ("have you noticed sir that we're walking down this corridor and there aren't any cameras following us?" - closely followed by the camera crew shouting to reset).

The rest - Trailers/Promos, Visual Effects, Model Shots, and Image Gallery - are all pretty superfluous, but some people may get off on watching about 10 minutes of raw Red Dwarf fly-bys with the bluescreens, greenscreens and all sorts of camera equipment visible. There's also some storyboards in the image gallery if anyone's interested for a few key scenes, but not for every episode.

And that's your lot. In terms of special features (I must confess that I've only seen a few episodes with commentary) RDXI has all the options I'm bothered about - Behind the scenes, deleted scenes, and smeg ups, but after RDX's stellar effort with the "we're smegged" feature, it felt a bit lacking.

I should also say that I'm a bit undecided about the menu. I wasn't overly keen on the ones from previous series - it all felt a bit like an old interactive CD-ROM from the 90's or something, but somehow I was disappointed by the RDX one when it lacked music. This more modern menu - I could take it or leave it, it's a menu. But it doesn't get in the way like some of the old ones did, where you couldn't skip menu transitions and have to wait until Starbug crashed and you go through the corridor or something.

I personally feel the extras were good enough. The behind the scenes though shorter than the series 10 equivalent for reasons like you mention, still was very interesting and informative. It simply did what it said on the tin. The deleted scenes were an additional series 11 experience too. Meanwhile, although I might prefer the BBC series DVD menus as they were more adventurous and exciting to choose through, I personally thought the series 11 blu-ray menu was fine and easier to access options from.